Transcript

Aftershocks add to Taiwan quake tragedy

PM Archive - Wednesday, 22 September , 1999 00:00:00

Reporter: Peter McCutcheon

COMPERE: In Taiwan, further aftershocks are making the job of rescuers even harder after yesterday's earthquake. Thousands of people are still trapped in rubble. The death toll now stands at 1,700, with several thousand injured. There's still no power to the central part of the island and tens of thousands of people have been left homeless. Peter McCutcheon was in central Taiwan during this morning's aftershocks.

PETER McCUTCHEON: Early this morning came the tremor everyone was fearing. Measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, it was a major earthquake in its own right, although considerably weaker than yesterday's tremor. In the city of Taichung, skyscrapers swayed for about 30 seconds, although there were no obvious signs of further building collapses.

Drivers stopped their cars and honked their horns, perhaps out of fear and frustration that this thriving Taiwanese metropolis is defenceless against the force of nature. Another small tremor followed 30 minutes later. Thousands of the city's residents had spent the night out in the open in the eerie darkness of the powerless city rather than risk experiencing another quake indoors. Many people told me they were just too scared to sleep.

The plight of people living in the southern satellite towns is all the more desperate. Whole modern apartment blocks have collapsed while 10 and 15 storey structures last night were tilting at precarious angles. The bottom two floors of an eight storey office block at Dhali [phonetic] had collapsed under thousands of tonnes of concrete. The cars in the garages were laid completely flat. Hopefully no one was sleeping downstairs yesterday morning.

It seemed a good, strong wind would knock over many of these structures. It's unclear how they were affected by this morning's aftershocks. The residents downstream from one of the island's biggest reservoirs at Sun Moon Lake are being evacuated today after the discovery of cracks in the reservoir wall. Most of the roads into the more remote central parts of the island were either destroyed in yesterday's earthquake or have been blocked by landslides.

People seriously injured in the more damaged parts of the island are being evacuated by helicopters, while doctors and paramedics have taken over a sports stadium in Nuntu [phonetic] and turned it into a makeshift surgery.

A helicopter pilot is quoted as saying he had to fight off a crowd of wounded people in the town of Puli [phonetic] as they tried to board his craft. He tried to explain he only had room for 10 people.

The Ministry of the Interior estimates 3000 people are still trapped in buildings. Rescuers are continuing to bore through collapsed buildings and sift through the rubble, but they report there are more bodies than survivors. Peter McCutcheon, Taipei.